Grants Available for Soil Health

Grants Available for Soil Health

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
With California Ag Today, I’m Tim Hammerich.

Farmers are being looked to for help fighting climate change, through adopting more sustainable practices. But in order for this to work it’s got to pay. Farming, after all, is a business.

To help, the CDFA has the Healthy Soils Program, which provides grant money to farmers looking to make investments in soil health building practices. Renata Brillinger is the Executive Director of the California Climate and Agriculture Network. She says farmers can qualify for up to $100,000 in grant money to implement any of 25 or more different healthy soil practices.

Brillinger… “It covers things like applying compost, which is by far the most popular practice that people get funded for, as well as cover cropping is also very popular. And mulching, doing hedge rows or other like conservation plantings that store carbon both in the plants and in the soil. The basic premise of all the practices that are funded is that it improves soil health, which pulls carbon out of the atmosphere and into the soil and into woody plants so that we've got the carbon where we want it and out of out of the atmosphere where we don't want it. It also funds prescribed grazing. So these are techniques for ranchers to help them better maintain soil health on range land. They just added a practice that gives grants to farmers removing orchards if they remove them and chip them and then spread them. This is another soil health measure.”

Applications are due June 26th. Visit the CDFA website for more information.

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